The Encana Weyerhauser well, completed in November, averaged 784 barrels of oil per day and 309,000 cubic feet of natural gas, according to Encana’s filing with the state Department of Natural Resources.

“This is certainly a key well. There’s no doubt,” said Dan Collins, a Baton Rouge landman who spent much of last year negotiating lease agreements with landowners in the shale.

“You know, 800 of anything coming out of the ground daily is a lot,” Collins said.

That’s especially true when the anything in question fetches nearly $100 a barrel.

Around two dozen wells have been drilled or are being drilled in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, an oil-rich formation that covers Louisiana’s midsection. Energy companies have leased more than 1 million acres in the formation, but so far the firms aren’t sharing much of their early production figures.

Kirk A. Barrell, president of Amelia Resources, of Texas, said before the formation can be considered economically viable, 10 to 20 wells will have to be completed.

“You need the initial (production) rates for 10 to 20 wells, but you also need to get 12 to 15 months out and see what the decline of that rate is,” Barrell said.

Still, Collins said it appears the energy companies believe they have something.

Oil companies have proposed a number of wells and discussed putting multiple drilling pads on landowners’ property, Collins said. The shale’s future remains to be seen, but there probably wouldn’t be so much activity if the energy companies didn’t believe their investment is worthwhile.

Encana has leased around 270,000 acres in the play, has completed one horizontal well, and has two new wells under way, according to its investor presentations.

Encana spokesman Alan Boras said he could not discuss any details of the company’s Tuscaloosa wells.

But the company will release more information during its fourth-quarter earnings report, scheduled for Feb. 17, Boras said.

A lot of people think every well in the Tuscaloosa should produce 1,000 barrels a day, but it takes time for drilling companies to figure out the best approach, Barrell said.

Barrell, the author of a blog on the Tuscaloosa Trend, said people forget or don’t realize that the early results varied from wells drilled in the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas.

While there were a few good wells whose maximum production was around 1,000 barrels per day, there were a number of wells whose daily production never reached double figures, Barrell said.

Collins said in order to recover the millions in drilling costs, a well’s initial production has to be pretty strong because the production curve declines pretty rapidly.

“I liken it to a ski slope. We certainly don’t want the black ski slope. We want one of those greens or blues that’s going to … gently drop over time,” Collins said.

Gifford Briggs, vice president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, said the Encana well’s results will encourage additional testing.

But it’s difficult to say how significant the well is without knowing the costs and how long the well will continue producing at the same rate, Briggs said.

In this early phase, Encana and other companies operating in the Tuscaloosa are still trying to answer a number of questions, such as what is the right depth to drill and how to get the most effective fracture, he said.

Wells in the Tuscaloosa are drilled vertically for around 11,000 feet and then horizontally. Drillers then fracture the formation in multiple stages, forcing millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and/or ceramic and chemicals into the formation to crack the shale. The sand and ceramic materials prop the cracks open, releasing the oil.

Fracking has drawn criticism from environmentalists and some landowners, who say the practice pollutes the air, contaminates water and consumes too much water. The oil and gas industry’s position is that fracking has been used for more than 50 years on thousands of wells with no evidence of groundwater pollution.

Collins said leasing activity in the area has slowed this year as companies have turned to drilling, but Barrell said his firm and its partners are still actively leasing.

Lease prices in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, compared to other shale plays, remains a “great, great value,” Barrell said.

Last year, leases were going for around $150 an acre.

Briggs said he has heard that leases are fetching $250 to $500 per acre.

The Philippine Department of Energy orders Forum Energy to suspend exploration work at Service Contract 72 as the acreage falls within the area of a territorial dispute between the Philippines and China.

Otto Energy farms out a 15 percent stake in Service Contract 55 off the Philippines to Red Emperor Resources and signs a letter of intent for Maersk Venturer to drill the Hawkeye-1 exploration well in the block.

BW Offshore has confirmed that bodies of the remaining three crew members who went missing in the FPSO explosion in Brazil in February, have been recovered. With this, the total number of fatalities from this incident stands at nine. Two crew members remain in hospital, receiving medical attention and their condition is reported to be […]

‘Blue Queen’, the recently delivered, Ulstein-designed, platform supply vessel has landed its first gig in the North Sea. The platform supply vessel, named at Ulstein Verft on Friday, February 27, will be working in the spot market. On Monday, it embarked on its first assignment with Lundin Petroleum. “We are very satisfied that the ‘Blue Queen’, […] […]

Forum Energy, a UK-based oil and gas exploration and production company, has declared a force majeure on Service Contract SC72, offshore the Philippines. The company has said that Philippine Department of Energy (“DOE”) has granted a force majeure on activities in the area because it is situated within the territorial disputed area of the West Philippine Sea […]

Statoil has awarded the Johan Sverdrup SURF Detail Engineering and Services 2015-20 contract to IKM Ocean Design. Johan Sverdrup field is a large oil discovery in production licenses PL265, PL501 and PL502 in the Utsira High region of Norwegian Continental Shelf, 140 km west of Stavanger. The field development is a phased development. Phase one […]

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Abigail Ross Hopper has announced the bureau will offer more than 21 million acres offshore Texas for oil and gas exploration and development in a lease sale that will include all available unleased areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area. Proposed Western Gulf of Mexico Lease […]

Trans Adriatic Pipeline AG (TAP) has launched two pre-qualification contracts for the construction of the 105 km offshore pipeline section under the Adriatic Sea. The greatest depth the pipeline will be laid is 820 meters. According to TAP, the first pre-qualification comprises Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) works for the offs […]

DOF Subsea UK’s survey and positioning business in the UK and US has been awarded an extension of a Master Service Agreement with Heerema Marine Contractors of Leiden, The Netherlands. The contract covers global provision of survey and positioning services on board Heerema Marine Contractor’s vessels, including the Hermod, Balder, Thialf, Aegir and support […]

After the acquisition by LetterOne, the Hamburg based upstream company RWE Dea has a new owner, a new supervisory board and gets a new name. LetterOne is a privately owned Luxembourg-based global investment vehicle focused on utilizing its financial resources, management and investment expertise. At the first general meeting of shareholders a new supervisory […]

Technip has been awarded a contract from Tupi BV, a consortium composed of Petrobras Netherland BV (PNBV, 65%), BG (25%) and Galp (10%), for the ongoing development of the Lula Alto field, located in the Santos Basin pre-salt area, Brazil. This contract covers the supply of around 200 kilometers of flexible pipes and associated equipment, […]

McDermott Middle East, Inc. has been awarded initial work for a significant power supply system replacement contract by Saudi Aramco for the Marjan field, offshore Saudi Arabia. Work is expected to be executed through the fourth quarter of 2016 and will be included in McDermott’s first quarter 2015 backlog. The overall brownfield project comprises integrated […]

Bibby Offshore, a provider of subsea installation, inspection, repair and maintenance services to the offshore oil and gas industry, has made several Board changes as part of a reorganisation of the... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Trans Adriatic Pipeline AG (TAP) has launched two pre-qualification contracts for the construction of the 105 km offshore pipeline section under the Adriatic Sea. The greatest depth the pipeline will... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Statoil has awarded the Johan Sverdrup SURF Detail Engineering and Services 2015-20 contract to IKM Ocean Design. Johan Sverdrup field is an oil discovery in production licenses PL265, PL501 and... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

McDermott International has been awarded a contract for a new jacket, temporary deck and replacement umbilical by Qatar Petroleum for the North Field Alpha gas development, offshore Qatar. According... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Technip has won a contract from Tupi BV, a consortium composed of Petrobras Netherland BV (PNBV, 65%), BG (25%) and Galp (10%), for the ongoing development of the Lula Alto field, located in the... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

DOF Subsea UK Limited, a provider of integrated subsea services, announced that its survey and positioning business in the UK and US has been awarded an extension of a Master Service Agreement with... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

McDermott has been awarded initial work for a significant power supply system replacement contract by Saudi Aramco for the Marjan field, offshore Saudi Arabia. Work is expected to be executed through... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

James Fisher has acquired the entire share capital of Subtech. The initial consideration is ZAR61.0m (£3.4m) in cash plus potential future consideration up to a maximum of ZAR175.0m (£9.9m) based on... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Ireland’s Providence reported that the initial evaluation of the fast-track 3D volume has revealed seismic morphologies in the Drombeg prospect which are consistent with those of a large... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Chevron Australia’s Gorgon Gas Development Fourth Train Expansion Proposal, which is expected to expand the liquefied natural gas (LNG) production capacity on Barrow Island from 15 to 20 million... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Statoil’s active leases in the Gulf of Mexico

Kellogg's may no longer be king of the breakfast table. BusinessWeek reports that sales for the brand's morning-foods department have fallen for seven quarters in a row, with cereal receiving an especially bad beating. It's not cereal's fault — Americans are changing the way they eat breakfast. Here are four of the major shifts: Cereal i […]

Last week, Facebook's extraordinary three-year-old Open Compute Project passed yet another milestone: it spawned its first commercial startup led by one of the people who helped birth the organization. And the startup, named Coolan, is following very closely in OCP's game-changing footsteps. Coolan was founded by Amir Michael, the former leader of […]

Apple recently rolled out a more diverse set of emoji, so now, instead of only a default pale white complexion, emoji people will come in a range of six skin tones. One specific coloring however, is absent: the redhead. Redhead-focused website Ginger Parrot has launched a Change.org petition in response to this oversight, begging Apple to include a redhead […]

A handful of payments companies including Square and PayPal are moving beyond their core market in payments to take advantage of an opportunity to help small businesses grow. Following the 2008 financial crisis, banks severely restricted access to capital, disproportionately affecting fledgling and medium-sized businesses. Annual loan originations to busines […]

The moon is the largest object floating through space around Earth, but it's not the only one. Actually, there are numerous rocky objects living in our inner solar system that occasionally pass by Earth. Duncan Forgan, a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews, recently wrote about one such object called 3753 Cruithne (pronounced krooy-nyuh) on […]

Berlin (AFP) - Borussia Dortmund eased to a 2-0 victory at third-division Dynamo Dresden on Tuesday to book their place in the German Cup quarter-finals thank to Ciro Immobile's second-half goals.The Italy striker pounced on a mistake by Dresden captain Michael Hefele to give Dortmund a 50th-minute lead and lit up a dull third-round tie to put the 2012 […]

Pivotal has just hired engineer Benjamin Black — the regular Amazon employee who co-wrote the paper that would become cloud titan Amazon Web Services all the way back in 2003. Black most recently worked at Microsoft, where he helped build Office 365, its answer to Google Apps, and prior to that founded a startup called Boundary, which monitored computer netw […]

Former McDonald's CEO Don Thompson abruptly retired from the brand in January amid accusations that his strategy was hurting US business. But McDonald's will pay Thompson $3 million for "consulting services," according to a report by CNBC. His replacement, Steve Easterbrook, will earn a salary of $1.1 million. Thompson retired on March 1 […]

The League is a new, exclusive dating app that only lets in the "most interesting" single people. It uses an are-you-cool-enough algorithm and LinkedIn work credentials to decide if an applicant is worthy of becoming a member. The only way to get in is by applying to a long waitlist that's approaching 100,000 people, or by snagging a VIP pass […]

The world is now divided between the forces of democracy and authoritarianism in a manner similar to the ideological fissures of the Cold War, the House Intelligence Committee's leading Democrat said. Speaking on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Adam Schiff warned that the world is now ideologically split and that Russia's Putin is leading an […]

The last three times that API inventories reported (each notably greater than expected), crude prices tumbled (only to ramp hilariously the next day following DOE inventory data). Against Bloomberg estimates of a 3.95 million barrel build, API printed only a 2.89 million barrel build; and WTI crude prices surged to the day's highs. Crude jumped to the […]

For those who bought the breakout to 5,000 in the Nasdaq... We are sad to report that The Nasdaq Composite was unable to trade back above 5,000 today... An early dip into the red for the week was rescued, then another dip after Europe closed took all but The Dow into the red for the week... but then as the USD strengthened and bonds sold off, stocks ral […]

As the world awaits to see if following his speech, Israel's PM will now proceed with launching a full on assault on Iran just to show he means business, or at least stage yet another false flag intervention to greenlight war in the middle east, several hundred kilometers to the northeast, the biggest offensive in the "war on ISIS" is now taki […]

A running theme here has been the great rotation of bubble-blowing credit from subprime housing to subprime auto-loans. Amid government probes of underwriting standards and soaring delinquencies, it appears when the least-creditworthy Americans are cut off from debt servitude, bad things happen in car sales... *FORD FEB. U.S. LIGHT-VEHICLE SALES FALL 2.0%, E […]

A CIA “psychological operations” manual prepared by a CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a “martyr” for the cause. The manual was authenticated by the U.S. government. The manual received so much publicity from Associated Press, Washington Post and other media that – during the […]

Just a day after Blackrock saw its biggest Bond ETF outflows in history ($525.8 million pulled on Monday), Actavis sold $21 billion of almost-junk 'BBB-' rated debt (at a minsicule yield of only 3.5%) in the 2nd largest bond issuance ever (2nd only to Verizon's massive $49 billion deal in 2013). The issue was oversubscribed 4.5x (around $90bn […]

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog, Only hours ago, Gallup released a new poll showing that only a small minority (just 17%) of Americans still view the US as the world’s economic superpower. Echoing former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ quip, “There is surely something odd about the world’s greatest power being the world’s greatest debtor […]

While every other word from talking-heads and policy-makers relates various anecdotes (or simple lies) about US economic growth, The Atlanta Fed appears to have taken a 'data-dependent' perspective on the real economy (as opposed to smoke and mirrors). Based on their GDPNow "nowcasting" model, The Atlanta Fed projects Q1 2015 GDP growth o […]

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, The following video of LAPD officers gunning down a homeless man in broad daylight is rightly getting a lot of attention. It’s not as if it was one officer dealing with a dangerous situation who panicked. There was a mob of police officers surrounding the victim, and rather than dealing with the situatio […]

Just yesterday we warned that, among the 'solutions' the Greek government was exploring in its scramble for cash to pay back The IMF loan, was 'borrowing' from the nation's pension funds. Today we get the sad confirmation that indeed Greece will raid cash reserves in pension funds and other public sector entities to cover its funding […]

This article in the Independent Sentinel was apparently developed from an interview that top conservative radio host Mark Levin conducted with broadcaster Susan Payne. Levin is a kind of conservative neocon from what we can tell and the Independent Sentinel seems to believe that radical Islam is the biggest threat since Prussia. But nonetheless, the determin […]

There have been anti-central bank demos in Germany, anti-EU demos across Europe and now there are anti-Monsanto demos in both South America and Europe, including Poland. The South American demos and protests have been going on for a while. But this protest in Poland seems fairly unique and shows once more how people are confronting a variety of authoritarian […]

One of the social mythologies of our time is that it is in the power and ability of governments to remake society in any image or shape that those with political authority consider "good," "right" and "just" for mankind. No other idea has caused more horror and hardship in modern times. The extreme attempts at such "social […]

My wife says I'm weird and she is probably right. First, I personally love cold weather, mountains and skiing, so why am I looking south? Maybe it is because the words of Jimmy Buffet's "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" keep going through my mind. Well, I enjoy cold and snow when it is out in the mountains surrounded by nature […]

Once one understands how much of the information band British media promotions occupy, it is difficult to watch the BBC for any length of time. Watch the Beeb for a day and be educated about how to believe and what to say. The Beeb is a prime exponent of dominant social themes. Each finds space for elaboration on news programming. These themes, in our view, […]